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April 28, 2019

Which is the Best Domain Extensions? .com, .co.id or .id

Why We Write this Article?

It’s the question we mostly encountered during an initial website project meeting. Most of the time, our clients are clueless because they have a minimal understanding of choosing the right domain extensions.

In this article, we would like to share our professional view and advice regarding domain extensions, and which one is the best one for your business.

Understanding What is TLD

TLD stands for Top Level Domain, this is the technical term for any letters that come after the last dot on your domain name. The most popular TLDs are (according to https://www.hayksaakian.com/most-popular-tlds/):

  • .com
  • .net
  • .org

You may be familiar with the famous domain registrar services such as GoDaddy and Namecheap, you will see various options TLDs, and sometimes you may do not aware such domain extensions exist. For example .design, .technology, .coffee, .tech are available there.

These TLDs also can be associated with the country origin of your business. In Indonesia, there are a couple of TLDs you can use, such as:

  • .co.id
  • .or.id
  • .sch.id
  • .id

This article we will dig deeper on the TLD that would be beneficial for your business.

[Myth] .com Domain Will Bring Me More Traffic and Ranked Better in Google

You may hear the myth many people referring that .com domain is the best one if you want to optimize your website for search ranking. Well, the truth is, it is not. According to Google’s official news update, your selections of a domain does not affect Google’s algorithm to favor your website.

However, though technically it doesn’t affect the way Google indexed your website, it does play a part in how the public perceives your website.

So What is the Real Benefit of Having .com Domain Then?

People tend to remember it better. Many netizens today may not be aware of the many domain selections today, for example, you are running an online shoe store with your brand named Chemyst. Though chemyst.store is available and it is relevant to your business, your potential customers may not be familiar with .store domain, and rather they will naturally try to open chemyst.com. By doing this you may lead traffic to another website than yours.

To add on this point, we know for a fact people are less likely to type the domain name on the browser anymore. They have the tendency to use Google to find the website. Say for example a user is intending to find your brand with the keyword “Chemyst”, and they find results of chemyst.com, chemyst.org.au, chemyst.store and chemyst.coffee. The .com domain will have a better chance to be clicked on, therefore it is telling Google the Chemyst .com is the most relevant website for “Chemyst” keyword, therefore, .com and eventually will have a better ranking than your chemyst.store website.

By not having .com domain, you will need to overcome this challenge (which can be solved with a proper SEO and well public brand recognition).

Trivia about .com Domain

Almost 50% of websites on the internet is using .com TLD, therefore it creates a perception it is the likely domain extension people are familiar with. However .com domains are getting way too crowded today, this makes the availability of the domain is limited. In Indonesia, some people may want to explore .co.id and .id domains due to that limitation reason alone.

What about the Benefit of .co.id or .id then?

Every .co.id and .id domain out there went through a verification process. This verification process only restricted whoever secured the domain name is verified business in Indonesia. Some of the national documentation requirements are KTP, NPWP, SIUP etc. This process is to ensure the business is actually located in Indonesia.

It legitimizes your business. It will also prevent digital scam (when one website pretends to be another business) in Indonesia, which we think add values to these .co.id or .id domains.

Okay, so which One should I Use then?

To answer to that question is, we have to analyze your business situation in order to give you quality recommendations. But we will provide an example in this article so you know our thinking process.

For example, you are in a business of Computer Repair Service in Jakarta, Indonesia. The nature of your business is targeting people that have computer problems within your domestic area. Therefore your market is secluded to the Indonesian market. On the domain availability there  repair-your-computer.com and repair-computer.id.

Our recommendation for a business like this is to secure the .id domain instead. Why? Because when someone search for computer repair, in their mind they have the intention to go to your physical shop or send their computer to. Using .id, it communicates to your potential market that your business is in Indonesia, therefore that user may favour the .id domain instead of .com on the Google search.

Conclusion

Though according to Google it did not impact the search ranking, it certainly affected the public perception on your business that can impact the Google Search Ranking. Choosing the right domain extension may depend on the nature of your business.

To have a professional analyze and make a quality recommendation to your business, please contact us at our website www.edwardaryana.com or email us at design@edwardaryana.com.

In addition to that, we would like to hear your experience on these domain names, does it made an impact on your business? If so leave a comment below.

April 11, 2019

Our Chosen 7 Free and Essentials WordPress Plugins

There are many plugins available in WordPress. As an open source CMS, WordPress developers all around the world are contributing to make WordPress a better platform. If you have experience in WordPress you will know, out-of-the-box WordPress is like a blank canvas. There are some further “tuning-up”  required to transform the website into a functional one.

What makes WordPress powerful is the Plugins. It empowers them. In this article, we will look further on our hand-picked essentials plugins. Additionally, we will also share our thoughts and experience why we think it is beneficial for your website.

Our target audience for this article is for an average non-website savvy user, therefore the focus is on the plugins that require minimal coding.

GA Google Analytics 

Your website traffic is one metric that determine the effectiveness of your website. The one and only analytical tool you should have in your website is Google Analytics. However, many users are turned off by the implementation of it. According to the instruction the user need to inject code to every of their page (confuse already?), which is true but us the developers we know our way around it. The official Google Analytics tracking code would look something like this:

Google Analytics Tracking Code from Google's Dashboard

For non-techies user coding looks like this can be confusing

With this plugin, you will be able to bypass the code injecting process. The plugin will be able to do the hard-lifting part, all you need to do is provide them the “GA Tracking ID” and that’s it. Easy as A-B-C. No FTP file update nor updating your header/footer.php file. It saves time.

WordPress Plugins Google Analytics

Inside WordPress’s backend login, installing Google Analytics code looks so much simpler

Backup Plugins: UpdraftPlus & WPDuplicator

Website backup function is like insurance for your website. In other words, if your website is infected by malware or any kind, you will always have the healthy version of the website to restore to. In order to do so, we use the combinations of 2 recommended plugins.

Learn more the 6 reasons why you need to backup your website according to Edward Aryana Design

UpdraftPlus – Free Version

Using UpdraftPlus it allows automation in your backup process. You can set your backup frequency according to your preferences (every week, every 2 weeks, every month and so on). UpdraftPlus will backup your Database, Template, and Plugins in a separate zip file (this particularly useful when we are troubleshooting a website). Additionally, this plugin can automatically save your backup files to a remote server (cloud server) of your choice; such as Dropbox, Google Drive, AWS, Remote FTP and many more.

However, the free version only allows you to restore the website to the same domain, you will need the pro version for restoring to a different domain. This is where we use Duplicator to compensate on this limitation.

Duplicator 

Essentially, Duplicator is a cloning tool for your website. For instance, you wanted to develop a feature to your website, but you want to do internal testing before the feature is live, then, Duplicator will come in handy. It allows your website to be duplicated to a different domain or to your localhost machine (Yes you can duplicate a website a runs it in your PC or Laptop).

Unlike Updraftplus WPDuplicator will put all of the files related to your website in one bulked ZIP file, so there is less file management required.

Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator

We have been using this feature far long before we decide to standardized WordPress as our CMS. RealFaviconGenerator is a website where you can automatically generate favicons into a string of code to be injected to your website. Injected to your website you say? This is mostly a challenge for non-techies users, if you encounter this problem then RealFaviconGenerator is the solution for you.

This plugin bypasses the code-injection process for favicon implementation, it simplifies the process. The plugin will do the coding process within a press of a button, all we need to do is just providing the right file format for your favicon.

WordFence 

We have saved a couple of our clients’ website using this plugin. WordFence nullifies any malicious hacking attempt (or also known as brute-force-attack) to your website. It is also logged any malware attempt. This tool provides us developers to evaluate where any potential threats to our clients’ website.

This plugin will also provide a firewall feature to your website, this means the website is significantly harder to hack. Moreover, WordFence has been acknowledged by the WordPress community as THE security plugin for WordPress. Users can also opt out to a premium feature that gives them access to priority customer service.

Contact Form 7 (and the extensions)

Arguably the most used and popular plugins in WordPress today. Contact Form 7 (or CF7 for short) is a powerful additional plugin in your website. The conventional way of building HTML form is far more complex than you think. CF7 made the form building is easy even for someone without a coding background. Some of the major highlights of CF7 are the following:

  • Custom Field for your from
  • You can specify a particular form to receive a piece of particular information. For instance, if you set a field as an “email field” in CF7 the form won’t submit unless the user inputs his/her email address. The plugin will know if it is in the wrong format.
  • You can set the form to send an email. For example,  you want your assistant to be notified whenever there’s an incoming inquiry from your website. No need additional coding for CF7, by default it has email sending capabilities
  • Due to the popularity of it, CF7 has many extensions to browse. Think of it a plugin for a plugin. One of our favorite extension of CF7 is Contact Form 7 Database Addon – CFDB7. This extension will have an internal logging system to whoever used your form. This means if some technical difficulties occurred in your website somehow they are not sending emails, the query would not be lost but instead recorded inside the website.
  • It is 100% free



JetPack

We only recently implement JetPack to be a compulsory plugin to all of the websites we managed. One of the selling-point of using JetPack it was developed by Automaticc, the developer who actually build WordPress. So you can consider this as “Official Plugin” for WordPress. Though JetPack offers many features in its self, there are several features that we love the most.

One Click Login 

With JetPack your website is connected to WordPress.com server, this means you can implement one-click login to your website without having to memorize every single admin username and password of all the WordPress websites you managed. As a prerequisite of this feature, you may be required to register in WordPress.com. This proved to be extremely time savings and convenience for a website consultant like us.

One Click login JetPack WordPress

Conveniently using one-click login in WordPress website

Auto Plugins Update and Plugins Management 

When you have run WordPress long enough, you will know how important is to keep your WordPress updated for a security reason. Many vulnerabilities mostly come from outdated Plugins or outdated WordPress version. Managing multiple WordPress websites can be a laborious work, one website can range between 5 – 15 plugins, updating every single one can take hours. Additionally, you will never know when the update is available. Some developers can push 2 different updates in a day.

Through JetPack you will be able to manage every single plugin in YOUR EVERY SINGLE WEBSITE you managed. Yes, you heard that right, everything is under one service. Essentially, JetPack sends commands to your connected website to do the update, this feature has helped us tremendously to cut time and effort for managing our client’s websites.

Plugin Manager WordPress using Jetpack

We can easily see which Plugins need an update, with one click the plugins can be easily updated

**Note: We do not recommend to enable the auto-update feature, as updating plugins has proven to break websites from time to time. Therefore, never do a major update before backing up your website. That’s why we love the next feature of JetPack.

You’ll be Notified When Your Website is Not Loading 

A down website may be costly for a business that heavily relying on their website. Having this notification will minimalize the downtime for the website, then the webmaster would be able to diagnose and implement solutions to your website. Think of it like you have assigned someone to look after your store, whatever happens to it you will always be notified.

Email Notifications from JetPack

Notifications from JetPack straight to your inbox, in some cases it may resolve by itself

Really Simple SSL

It is exactly like it sounds, it is really simple. You may need some technical understanding to implement SSL to your cPanel. In addition to that, you will need some major understanding of what to tinker for implementing SSL to your website. But not in WordPress, using this plugin it bypasses all of the .htaccess file editing and coding related changes you have to make to activate SSL.

As mentioned in Neil Patel’s article, we understand the role of SSL in SEO. Using this plugin will definitely save time and makes it easier to be activated on your website.

SEO Yoast

We save the best one for last. If (God knows what) for some reason you want to minimalize your plugins usage, the one you shouldn’t rule out is SEO Yoast. This game changer plugin will provide all the tools you need for your internal Search Optimization work. Some of the major highlights of this plugin are as follow:

  • Custom Meta Description of each page
  • Keywords Targeting
  • Readability Analysis – Help the flow of your content
  • In-page checker to evaluate whether the page you published is search-friendly compliant
  • Detect any SEO related problems on your website

Basically, if you want to be on top of your game in your website SEO, Yoast is a must have plugin.

Last Words

We have shared our most used and recommended WordPress plugins. The great thing about WordPress it is community driven, therefore do let us know what plugins you’ll find useful and compulsory for your website in the comment below. We love to hear from our readers.


April 9, 2019

6 Reasons Why You Need to Backup Your Website

In this article, I would like to share my perspective and experience as a website consultant professionals, why backing your website is important. I will also break it down what are the common threats and mistakes of having a website.

Your website is open to everyone including cyber threats

Having a website opens your business to the worldwide public, this can be both negative and positive, on the negative side your website is vulnerable on many levels to so-called hackers or cyber threats

You may forget to renew your domain or hosting

One of the common problems owning the website you may forget when your domain or hosting service is due, whether it was your old developer did not inform you or you do not remember which email it was registered under, when hosting and domain are not renewed on time, by system your website will be erased and gone forever.

You are just unlucky

Hackers today deploy what we called “bot”. This bot will jump from website to website to look any loophole in your website, you may not be targeted but your website may have out of date plugins or WordPress, this bot is specifically targeting website with vulnerabilities and once your website is infected it is almost impossible to remove it.
It may come from your internal organization

Whether it is a sloppy employee or employee with the negative intention towards your business, we’ve seen all sort of efforts made as an inside job to create damage to the business, do not rule out this possibility.

Your website may be secured, but the server you are using may not be

You took preliminary precaution by putting all of the bells and whistles for your website security, however, your hosting still can be vulnerable with cyber attacks, even Google, Facebook and Twitter have been hacked at one time.

*Pro Tips – Use hosting such as Niagahoster to minimalize the riks of hosting hacking

You made changes to the website all of a sudden the website is not working

This one is a classic problem, for a non-savvy user you may have the basic understanding but you are limited to what you know. In a website environment, there’s no undo button, once the changes are submitted to the server you are overwriting the previous setting. To troubleshoot a website that we have no idea where it was changed, by experience it is almost impossible to fix it, rather it will make the problem worse, the easiest method is to restore the website.



How Did We Backup Our Client Websites?

We are using automated backup every 2 weeks* for minimal 1 year contract

Using a special setting we will apply automated backups for every 2 weeks, this will ensure we will have a copy of your website every 2 weeks. This means for one year we have 26 different backups of your website to choose for.

*Usually we are flexible upon client’s request

We are using UpdraftPlus (WordPress Only)

The plugins of our choice is UpdraftPlus , this plugin will allow our client’s website to be backed up automatically to our secure cloud storage. Eventhough the free version is enough for backing up your websites the paid version will unlock more settings and customisation. For clients that wanted more backup customisation we will subscribe the Paid version of UpdraftPlus

Its like insurance but for website

Your website is working hard 24/7 to generate leads, sales or empowering your business and you probably spent some monetary value, time and effort into it, don’t risk losing it.

We will put your backup in secure off-site cloud storage, using 2FA (two-factor authentication)

Meaning we are eliminating equipment failure and loss of equipment factors. So, for example, one day our backup computer breaks down or stolen we will still have your website secure in the cloud storage.

“But you said anyone can be hacked? Wouldn’t putting our website back up on a cloud-storage will compromise our backup too?” You may ask. The ugly truth is yes it is, knowing this fact we take the security of your files seriously, our cloud storage is secured with what called 2FA or Two-factor authentication. It is similar method to OTP when you made a credit card purchase but it is more sophisticated. This will ensure only user with the authenticator be able to access your file.

Additionally, your file is encrypted in a zip file, even a breach has been made they will have no idea if the file is a website backup, it will take time and manual scanning (hackers hate that!) to make them realize its for a website, then they also still need to break to your website in order to manipulate the backup. In our experience, this is the most secure method for website backup.

Conclusion

Those are some of the methods we found to be effective to be implemented to our clients. These methods has saved numerous of our clients website. Having a healthy website will give your website a better chance to be organically ranked in Google Search Engine, an infected website will definitely punish your website ranking in Google, plus Google also can flagged (user will get a warning when opening in Google Chrome) your website that will significantly drop your website traffic. If the infection is severe, even a topic containing your business in Gmail can be automatically put into junk mail by google.

Share and comment here below if you have other website backup method that works with you or your website hacked experience.

 

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